Tea with a Stranger
by Synodic
Summary: Camille goes grocery shopping on a Tuesday and ends up with an adventure she could do very well without. ( OC. / world-drop. )
1. Prologue

**_aite whats shakin bacon_**

 **HEEEEY – I have returned to tactlessly shove this mess down your throats; another take on the "modern teenager falls into fictional world" trope! WHO'S EXCITED**

 **/crickets**

 **Anyway, I would like to preface this prologue with a few minor warnings:**

 **\- The prologue itself is an old & frivolous drabble, written in the middle of the night back in...March? I think?**

 **\- My writing ability tends to spiral into the category of 'oh god no' when I'm half-asleep.**

 **\- Despite the prologue's age, it's still unedited and has pretty much just been... lurking in my drafts since its accidental birth. I've tried editing it, buuuuut since I don't know how to synchronize free time and inspiration, every time I open the file I just kinda go "hnnnnnnnnnnnggggggNOPE" before closing it again. I TRIED, OKAY. I'VE BEEN HOLDING MY BRAIN AT GUNPOINT TRYING TO EDIT THIS THING, BUT TO NO AVAIL. LEAVE ME BE AND FORGIVE THE ERRORS THAT ARE BOUND TO OCCUR (jk feel free to notify me & I'll go back and fix it. One day. Probably.)**

 **\- On second thought, this thing isn't even a prologue. It's more like...a bundle of flashbacks told in weird chronological snippets.**

 **\- Which is why it has, like, no dialogue. And is written via an omniscient viewpoint. /sweats**

 **\- I tend to get REALLY INTO character development at the cost of plot and the problem with that method is that I go off on tangents and end up with a lot of shit that isn't going anywhere. REALISTIC AND CONSISTENT PLOT? NOT ON MY WATCH**

 **\- Honestly? The OC is just plain rude and has all the engaging qualities of a potato peeler.**

 **\- I haven't caught up with the manga yet (I have pathetically little time to do stuff lately huff huff), so if anything in this story goes against canon, you could either tell me or smack me in the face with a fine brick of your choice. Or both. Both works.**

 **\- Actually, this is a trainwreck and might even be borderline parodical at times. But hopefully it's still readable. A GIRL CAN HOPE RIGHT. Girl. Woman. Super old author who still refuses to accept her position as a functional member of society. /hisses and retreats into a pile of half-finished fics and empty dorito bags.**

 **\- ONE LAST THING! I'm still kind of new to this fandom and haven't read a single OP fanfic yet, so if you have any recs please holla me! (Sssssshould probably read some before posting my own, but when I join a fandom I don't even bother testing the waters – I just swan dive into the deep end and hope I don't die.)**

 **OKAY THAT'S ALL.**

 **Let's trudge through this hodgepodge and embark on this fanfic-journey together as hardcore tomodachis.**

 **Leggo.**

* * *

 **Tea with a Stranger**

 **\- PROLOGUE -**

 _Let's Rewind._

Alright, she'd admit it. Eating a funky-looking fruit offered to her by a complete stranger in a cramped alleyway hadn't been the smartest of choices. But if this predicament was some sort of karmic retribution, the responsible deity was overdoing it.

Camille did _not_ deserve to be thrown into a Japanese comic book.

Hell, in her defense, Camille wasn't even a bad person. She steered clear of all the major sins. She had never robbed anybody at knife-point, she didn't double-dip at parties, and she sometimes passed the potatoes during dinner.

Sure, she had certain faults. Her moral compass had been broken at the tender age of five, she was a certified wimp (understandable, when you have arms like twigs), and she hardly did anything of particular importance or productive value. But none of these things made her _evil._ She was just brought up to believe in self-preservation and the underappreciated value of boredom. Your average kind of girl.

In other words, this entire phenomenon was destined for failure from the very beginning. Camille wasn't built to survive wacky adventures. All she wanted was to remain comfortable middle class and go through life undetected. She had the social appeal of a decomposing goat, and couldn't coordinate a jumping-jack. Her three favorite hobbies at the time were sleeping, complaining, and not talking to anyone at social functions. Plans for the future? Becoming a full-fledged hermit. It was the only appropriate occupation.

Basically, Camille was already well on her way to becoming a lonely cat lady and probably had the life expectancy of a Tamagotchi. She didn't even mind. No, Camille Cousteau was fully content with her sedentary lifestyle and found everything to be completely _perfect._

At least up until the moment she devoured an enchanted fruit, was removed from her home planet, transported to a floating island, accused of diabolism, and hunted down by an army of leprechauns due to accidental vandalism and destruction of religious property.

Stop.

Rewind.

Let's try that again.

You see, it all began when Camille made a rather grand entrance into the fictional pirate world.

…But for the sake of convenience, let's start a little bit earlier.

* * *

More specifically, let's start in Colmar, France.

 _La Pâtisserie de Cousteau_ was situated at the end of the town's main street, nestled snugly between the local bookstore and a modest restaurant. Pungent odors and sweet aromas wafted through the air and tugged at all noses nearby. The sun was setting and the evening rush was in full swing as customers from all walks of life crowded the pastry shop counter.

It was Tuesday, and the Cousteau family was terrified.

Correction: It was Tuesday, and they were out of apples.

No apples meant to apple tart. No apple tart meant disappointed customers. Disappointed customers was downright outrageous and most definitely unacceptable.

But it was _Tuesday._

A Cousteau did not go grocery shopping on a Tuesday. Grocery shopping during weekdays was sacrilege. The only fruits you could hope to find on a Tuesday were leftovers from the weekend, sure to be musty and moldy and, heaven forbid, _flavorless._

But to the family's collective dismay, the importance of satisfied customers outranked a pastry chef's pride by far. Thus the head of the household, Denis Cousteau, swallowed his honor in a heroic display of bravery and sent his only daughter out to fetch the finest apples she could find.

Camille was not a happy camper.

She rolled out of bed to express her chagrin in long groans at different octaves, before eventually accepting her fate with a heavy huff (a very dignified response considering her level of consciousness). Her father gave her a solemn nod, like she had just announced her intention to become a martyr. Camille snorted, rolled her eyes heavenwards, and grabbed an umbrella to ward off the spring rain outside.

With one last grunt, she slouched her way out the door, unintentionally embarking on a grocery trip that would take her far beyond the threshold of her family's pastry shop.

* * *

Despite Camille's best efforts, Acceptable Apples to Consume were a species now extinct. She sauntered home empty-handed, wrestling with her umbrella in the wind like a schizophrenic Mary Poppins. Hissing at no one in particular, she decided to take a shortcut, and ducked into one of the cramped alleys for some shelter.

Her annoyance levels were zeroed out the moment she passed by a fruit stand. The stand was guarded by a somewhat lanky man of middle age, with a rapidly retreating hairline, and an impressive beard to make up for it.

He beckoned her over with a wave.

In hindsight, she probably should have seen it coming. She had already tempted fate that evening by going grocery shopping on a Tuesday, and when a shady stranger gestures for you to get closer, well – he most likely plans to harvest your organs. But while Camille was a suspicious creature by nature, the man sold _apples_ , and her family's honor was at stake. So she scowled, squared her shoulders and made a bee-line for the fruit stand.

The second the man realized he had seized a customer, he launched into a detailed story about his homegrown apple tree. Camille ignored him in favor of staring at some kind of mutated plum next to the apples, marveling at its colossal size and fascinating swirl pattern. When he finally caught her staring at the bizarre fruit, he nudged it towards her and offered her a taste.

This was the point where someone should have grabbed her by the arm and said, _'Camille, it's time to go.'_

No one did this.

And because Camille was a curious soul when it came to new gastronomical delights, she shrugged and accepted the man's amiable offer.

Wrong thing to do.

Camille brought the hefty fruit to her lips, sank her teeth into the juicy pulp–

– and _froze._

It tasted like panic, disappointment, and the absolute conviction that your entire life is crumbling around your shoulders and that _this is how you die._

Camille, petrified, stared at the fruit vendor in an impressive mixture of shock, terror and complete betrayal – her mouth still stuck in mid-chew. The juice of the fruit spread like fire across her tongue, slaughtering every single gustatory cell in its way, and her mind was brimming with unconditional regret.

But she couldn't spit it out.

If there was one thing her parent had taught her, it was to never shame another man for his own comestible creation. That included fermented fish, animal heads of various sizes, _and_ fruity annihilation. Regardless of your disgust, you did not, under any circumstance, spit out a man's homegrown fruit in front of his own face.

So there she was; gagging and sweating bullets in the middle of an abandoned alleyway as her body convulsed in sheer protest. One of her eyes twitched sporadically and she willed herself to _not barf_ because she _had not been raised in a goddamn barn._

In the end, Camille simply decided to commit the biggest mistake of her entire life.

She swallowed the fruit.

The man smiled.

And with a rather anticlimactic _'plop!',_ Camille's body transformed into pure nuclear energy and blew a hole straight through spacetime.

* * *

Simply put, Gardenia was a sky island.

More accurately put, it was an archipelago; a handful of floating islands, all filled with an abundance of nature and connected by wooden handcrafted bridges. Some of the trees were heavy with leaves and stretched up, fighting a long, unbearably slow battle for sunlight. Others were smaller and bore fruit in cycles which had little to do with the permanent spring weather. Narrow rivers slithered across the bigger islands as the sole water supply, and how they stayed perpetually filled was a mystery unsolved by time.

Although Gardenia was a rather secluded place in Paradise, The Golden Age of Piracy had created a steady stream of rowdy pirates. It affected all kinds of islands in the Grand Line – this sky island included. While few pirates managed to find a way up, and even fewer bothered to stay once they realized Gardenia had no treasure to offer besides some outstandingly glamorous plants, the peculiar air currents around the island had an annoying tendency to waft wanted posters into trees and littering the small footpaths.

Now, before we continue any further, it may be interesting to note a few things about the inhabitants of this particular sky island.

First of all, your average Gardenian rarely grew taller than twenty inches. They were tiny jack of all trades, lived off the land, and hardcore vegetarians. Sympathy for carnivores was a feeling the population had bred out decades ago.

Furthermore, Gardenians practiced animism, dendrolatry, and spent a majority of their free-time worshiping shrubbery. They had an amiable give-and-take relationship with nature, and they loved it.

And finally, a Gardenian was genetically predisposed to insanity and obsession. Every single person above the age of four was, by regular standards, certifiably mentally unsound.

Moving on.

Today was a day of joy. The Gardenians were all out of their timbered huts and had gathered together in the town square for their monthly ceremony to celebrate their bountiful harvest and pledge their loyalty to the local greenery. They busied themselves with an activity that vaguely resembled singing (using decibels only heard in whalesong) and conveying their emotions through interpretive dance. The cacophony drowned out the sounds of birdsong and wind tugging at drying leaves. Everything was going quite well.

Alas, it was not meant to last.

Just when the feast was in full swing, an interesting diversion occurred.

More to the point, Camille Cousteau, with her normal panache for excellent timing, fell from the sky, screeching like the shades of hell were at her feet, and careened with wild abandon straight into their makeshift altar.

The force of impact sent flower decorations and one unfortunate grandmother hurtling through the air as the Gardenian altar ruptured and turned into a broken, angled slab of lumber.

Everything was completely still.

The Gardenians fixedly avoided each other's gaze in favor of staring at the inelegant tangle of limbs almost completely flattened into the street, surrounded by shrine remains. Eventually, the village elder braved to step closer. The Gardenians began chattering in low, suspicious tones as the elder touched one of the protruding limbs with his cherished staff.

The humanoid lump let out a strangled wheeze.

When Camille finally regained feeling in her face and could sense a root forcing its way into her spinal cord, she peeled her cheek off of the ground with a feeble cough. She barely had time to register that there was a _freaking forest_ up ahead, before something cold poked her leg. With tremendous effort, she turned around.

A knee-high pensioner was prodding her with a tiny stick. He smelled faintly like thawing minced beef, wore nothing but a leaf between his legs, and was flanked by a whole troop of garden gnomes in a similar state of undress.

She stared.

They stared back.

Silence reigned.

Camille broke it when she nailed the elder in the face with her left shoe and fled screaming into the woods.

* * *

She spent her first month in Gardenia chewing leaves, curled into fetal position, and convinced she had contracted some rare, probably fatal jungle disease from the funky plum-fruit.

Meanwhile, the Gardenians were mesmerized by the idea that she was the ready vessel of a vengeful god. They figured she had come to claim what was hers, and saw her as something that should be hunted down, beheaded, torched, and buried in a salt quarry.

For the most part, Camille thought she handled the situation just fine. She only suffered a few minor heart attacks, cried thrice, and had no more than five existential crises. Or six. Okay, maybe nine. But considering her situation, it wasn't all that surprising.

The first day was, without a doubt, the most confusing. After screaming and running through an entire forest in a fit of panic and sheer confusion, she eventually reached a clearing. There she tripped over her own legs with the grace of a thousand swans, went sprawling with a choked shriek, and almost tumbled off the edge of the island.

She poked her head out and over the edge, squinting down into the wild blue yonder.

The island was _floating._

...She decided to retreat and tackle that particular abomination later.

In terms of practicality, a panic attack was one of the worst things she could provide herself with. So she took a deep breath and flopped onto her back to assess her current situation.

The island was floating, inhabited by tiny half-naked humans, and had zero phone reception.

Right.

Surely a perfectly logical explanation could account for this.

Half an hour later, she concluded that her sanity had been forever banished, exiled in a land of no return. Her empty stomach screamed dissonant melodies of pain, agony and longing, and she besought the heavens in frustration.

At long last, Camille sat upright, dragging her palms across her face with a groan. Hallucination or no, it was clear that everyone here was exceptionally insane. She could stay out here, all alone in the middle of nowhere, or she could play along before they straight-up murdered her as a result of cultural miscommunication.

Honestly, the choice wasn't even that hard.

When Camille finally managed to guess her way back into the village, the elder and his council (staffed by four old women and six guinea pigs) were holding a conference to deal with the situation that had cropped up. She gave them a once-over, belatedly realized that the council had the combined IQ of a raisin, and began praying to any merciful god listening, begging them to end this fever dream before the garden gnomes decided on her corporal punishment.

Was she going to be exiled and forced to live on a mountaintop, fending for herself and living off flambéed raccoons?

Would she get pushed over the island's edge, thrown from thirty thousand feet – or whatever cruising altitude was?

Would they demand reparations in the form of her head on a pike?

Or burn her at the stake as a sacrifice to their garden gods?

Good lord, the possibilities were endless.

Had the world been a fair place, she could have apologized humbly and rebuilt the altar for its contingent of diligent worshipers with only a minor political kerfuffle. But the world was anything but fair, and Camille was being charged for a murder most foul and labeled as the harbinger of Satan.

Once the elder finally turned to her and explained (in some sort of archaic English that gave her a headache) how she had impinged on their honor and violated the sacred truce between them and mother nature, Camille was just about ready to grovel to any likely deity for some kind of hallucinatory cure. That was, until he told her that the punishment was to steer clear of any religious establishment in the future.

Relief washed over her. A few days later, the relief increased tenfold as they gave her a house to boot.

Camille liked to think they gave it to her out of pity.

In reality, they gave her the house for an entirely different reason. You see, on her second day, when her stomach felt like it had denied all hope and begun to eat itself, she had tried to find something edible on her own. And frankly, seeing a chipmunked motherfucker doublefisting unripe nuts and semi-poisonous plants into her mouth in the middle of the street before turning a violent shade of green and throwing it all up minutes later – well, it kind of terrified the children. It had to stop.

So. They gave her a house.

...It _might_ also have been because Camille lifted the village elder by his shoulder and discreetly threatened to strangle him with his own entrails if he didn't _help her the fuck out._

But anyway.

The house was a small structure, placed on an equally tiny island that gave her a rather nice overview of the town below. Inside, it was cold and dank after years of neglect. The air was stagnant and stank of rot and mildew, and cobwebs of all sizes stretched like gossamer lace among the ceiling rafters. It kind of looked like the bastard offspring of a tree house and a public restroom. While it was big by Gardenian standards, her face still smashed right into one of the low-hanging beams when she entered. Besides a small bedroom, an enclosed section with a wooden bathtub, and a cramped main room with a petite table and chair, it didn't encompass much. But seeing as she was probably high on plum-juice (or the butt of a really tasteless joke), she didn't care to complain.

According to the elder, the house had been built as a gift to a coven of gargantuan witches (or as we like to call them, a group of average humans), and its poor state came from being under the care of neglectful occultists.

Camille stared at the house and vaguely wondered if she should perhaps consider an exorcism.

Then again, she had no intention of staying on the same island as the Gardenians and their very worrisome culture, and figured she might as well shimmy her way into the bedroom to sleep off all the freaky drugs in her system.

When she woke up the next day, the fever dream still hadn't subsided. Camille scowled at the ceiling for several minutes, went outside to force some harmless fruit down her throat and drink water from a nearby river, before wobbling straight back to bed. The hallucination would have to end eventually, so she might as well speed things up by sleeping through most of it.

By the fifth day her phone was dead and gone, and she was fairly certain she wasn't getting all the nutrients she needed. While the Gardenians lapsed into their old routine, Camille tried to cope by sleeping an obscene amount and going on a redecorating frenzy. Had she been back home, she would have given the house a makeover and filled it with lots of elephant and bird related decor, and at least one framed photo of Dick Van Dyke. Alas, she had to make do with a wooden tea pot hidden in one of the main room's dusty cabinets. Which was better than nothing, she supposed.

The second week rolled around and Camille was getting pretty tired of residing in her own subconscious, and even more tired of the moldy smell in her temporary house. With little else to do, she decided to give it some semblance of order. Old, moth-eaten cotton garments were tucked away in a chest, so she dug them out and began to scrub the walls with a vengeance.

She would have given up halfway through if she had anywhere else to go, or anything else to do.

The rest of the month was spent frantically trying to orient herself. She studied her predicament for days, looking at advantages and disadvantages of every course of action and their possible outcomes. Meanwhile, the Gardenian children stayed far away from her house. Mostly because their parents convinced them a scary lady had claimed the house as her territory and that those who dared to enter her domain would be imprisoned in her closet. Nearly all the adults were under the impression that she would challenge trespassers to savage barbaric duels, and didn't really get any closer to her than the children. All things considered, Camille's bubble of seclusion had been rebuilt. Her only fear was to wake up and find a wooden fork planted deep in her forehead while a Gardenian high-tailed it out of her window, howling as they fled into the night.

Sometimes she would wander the streets and bewail her fate loudly, and at length, to the sky. Other days, she stayed in bed and lamented the lack of plumbing, or watched dust motes dance in the air when that got too stressful. Once, she even fashioned some sort of toothbrush from wooden fibers. All the while, her mind and body readjusted to being a persona non grata on the same nutritional plan as a group of vegetarian garden gnomes.

(She _did_ try to eat a rabbit once, but the village elder bounced out from a nearby bush, whacked her over the head with his staff and called her a _loathsome worm of fetid soils_ before she even got her hands on it.)

But the majority of her time was spent glaring at the bedroom ceiling as she wondered why everything felt so frighteningly real.

* * *

The second month arrived. Camille still wasn't sure what kind of sick fever dream she was loping through, but she was starting to get real tired of binging on nuts, berries and semi-clean river water.

She craved a sandwich with the crusts cut off, and decided that enough was enough.

Desperate for something that wasn't fruit, she hunted down a plant that somewhat resembled wheat. Crushing the dried seeds confirmed that, yes, they _did_ contain flour. A minuscule amount per plant, but she had time to spare.

She couldn't exactly make a five-star dinner from water and flour alone, but it would have to do. No eggs, no butter, no yeast, no salt – the options were limited, but her father had taught her all kinds of obsolete recipes, and Camille would be damned if she wasn't going to make something edible.

She figured any kind of progress would be good for her state of mind.

Creating a fire with flint stones was not as easy as MacGyver made it seem, and blisters covered her fingers by the time it ignited. The wooden contraption she found probably wasn't hygienic either, and could have been used as a frisbee for all she knew. But it was thin and flat and did the job.

Hours later an aroma of warm, slow-frying pancakes filled the air.

The pancakes weren't particularly fluffy, and were in dire need of some salt, but after a whole month of only fruit and vegetables, it tasted like flavorless bliss. Camille shoved the burned first-tries into a bucket, left it outside her house for any nearby animal to eat, and went scavenging for more wheat seeds.

By the time she returned, the bucket was licked clean and void of even a microscopic crumb. Instead, it was filled with herbs. _Edible_ herbs.

Apparently, the Gardenians had a penchant for pancakes.

Before long, Camille was a part of the Gardenian barter system. In exchange for delectable concoction, the village folk gave her eggs, butter, milk and sugar. While one part of Camille wanted them to get away from her personal den, the arrangement cemented a truce between her and the village, and gave her more ingredients to work with. So she began kneading dough for daily batches of bread and paid them no mind.

Besides, the scent of baking loaves permeating the air was rather nostalgic.

* * *

Month number three came and went, and by the end of it Camille had done little besides cleaning up her overgrown garden and making a preposterous amount of lemon balm tea.

She still spent some time sitting in her kitchen and quietly seething about her situation like some misanthropic evil grandma, and occasionally went outside to plant her fists on her hips and glower up at the bright sky for no reason. But there wasn't much time left to be angry at her fate when she had noon loaves to bake.

When the Gardenians came for their daily, uniquely scrumptious treat, they come in hordes, in legions; they didn't visit her kitchen, they laid siege to it. She was still isolated from the society at large, and referred to by the children only as 'the crone', but once you get a reputation as a devil spawn, there's really no shedding it. So she exchanged food for utensils and ignored their absurd conversations. Something about increased pirate activity in Paradise, and the Marines being a blight upon the earth. She didn't really care to ask.

Towards the end of the month, Camille looked out over her unkempt garden and realized it could have been impressive, if only she had spent more time tending to it. She could get some more ingredients out of it, even.

With that in mind, she began to slaughter all the grass, weed, and other things in her garden that were unwanted. Some of the plants she ripped away weren't even weeds. The Gardenians would have told her, but nobody wanted to go against Camille, simply because Camille was Camille, and Camilles were not beings that one should meddle with.

Once her garden looked acceptable, Camille went to bed, rolled herself into a burrito format and tried to accept the fact that maybe, _just maybe,_ she was a tiny bit crazy.

* * *

Throughout the fourth month, her daily routine consisted of baking, gardening, and settling with an almost spiteful efficiency.

Having a surprisingly green thumb made things a little less boring, and finding edible plants gradually became easier. In the middle of the month, she even stumbled across (quite literally) a dozy hedgehog, sleeping the day away in her garden.

She felt an instant kinship.

The hedgehog let out a sleepy squeak and broke her trance. Camille crouched to coo at it, pausing slightly when her fingers were half an inch away from his snout.

In this new plane of existence, where floating island and tiny gardeners were the norm – maybe touching a hedgehog was a bad idea.

Maybe the hedgehog could actually disassemble himself and form around her body as a suit of highly advanced weaponry that allowed her to fight aliens and demigods and jaded Russians.

Or maybe he was an average hedgehog.

Either way, he was pretty cute, so Camille shrugged and decided to bring him inside to see if he preferred sleeping on her kitchen table.

She named him Thistle.

* * *

During the fifth month, Camille became sure of one thing.

Thistle was her best friend.

...Okay, fine, so that might have been a bit of an overstatement. But at that moment, the term "best friend" could be loosely defined as anyone who didn't want to send her to the pits of hell at first sight.

And if a hedgehog fit that bill, then a hedgehog her best friend would be.

With little else to do in her spare time besides cultivating her garden and making new batches of bread, Camille welcomed the hedgehog's company with open arms. Thistle communicated through a combination of grunts, snuffles and squeals, and while they didn't understand each other at all, Camille adored him.

In fact, she had even brought him with her on a walk down to the island's town, when her life decided to turn ten times worse than it already was.

Thistle was huddled inside of her hoodie, held up by the tightened drawstring with his snout poking out, while Camille strolled past a pack of laughing children, a man in the middle of being overly-affectionate with his tree, and an elderly lady who was busy stabbing at paper pages on the ground, muttering something about littering and wasteful uses of shrubbery.

Curious, Camille stooped down to pick up a page and give it a quick look.

She frowned.

The sheet of paper, which looked more like a wanted poster from your typical Western movie than anything else, featured the picture of a boy. The straw hat on his head seemed to be on the verge of falling off, and he smiled like a child, all teeth and dimples and zero reservedness of any kind – which, when she thought about it, looked oddly familiar _._

Something distant niggled at the back of her mind.

As the hamster wheel of her brain slowly tried to crank out the only possible explanation, she stole a glance down at the boy's name an–

Realization dawned.

Camille's inarticulate scream carried to the heavens.

* * *

Month number six came around, and Camille was panicking.

This was not good.

This was not good _at all._

She spent her days in the kitchen, nursing a cup of lemon balm tea and trying to make sense of everything. Which was a lot harder than it sounds. Because somehow, for some reason, she had managed to devour an interdimensional portal key, detoured into a fictional pirate world, and now she was stuck inside a story written by a middle-aged Japanese artist.

Camille had read enough fanfictions to know where this was going.

In fact, she could already picture it. Before she would be able to blink, the Straw Hat Pirates would probably come crashing in through her window, armed with nerves of steel, tequila blood and hair that defied common sense. They would consider her a valuable asset to the crew for no reason at all, and cart her off, forcing her to engage in a dangerous cross-country journey and questionable sea voyages that she had no desire to be involved in. The fact that she wrote a new will and testament every time she got the sniffles would be ignored. Even if she told them she hailed from a different planet where cutting your sandwich diagonally is considered daring, and that she would rather not embark on yet another death-defying adventure, they wouldn't care to listen. Then they would most likely proceed to assimilate her into the crew by making friendship bracelets and doing trust falls or braiding each other's hair.

She would have to spend her the rest of her life on the run from shady governmental organizations, fighting totalitarian dictatorships and superpowered murderers, before meeting her true baking nemesis who could probably atomize her with, like, a _sneeze._

Camille slammed her forehead into the kitchen table with a loud groan and briefly entertained the thought of walking into a meat grinder.

* * *

As the seventh month came to an end, Camille was significantly more calm.

The chances of meeting the Straw Hats were slim to none, and if it ever _did_ happened, she would do anything in her power to stay the hell away.

There were very few things that motivated Camille Cousteau, but self-preservation was first on the short list.

Keeping her bum parked in Gardenia was the lesser of two evils. She could have a comfortable (comparatively speaking) life, and plot the village elder's demise in peace. Besides, she met none of the basic pirate requirements, was an involuntary vegetarian, and only had, like, two survival shows from Discovery Channel under her belt.

There was no way she would put herself in the line of fire. Her life was going to be pirate-free, marine-free, and fishmen-free, even if it killed her. All she had to do was stay away from sea rovers, brooding storylines and dramatic monologues.

It couldn't be _that_ hard.

* * *

The eight month passed without any interesting events, save for Camille's eighteenth birthday. Which wasn't even that interesting, seeing as she slept through most of it.

After several months of cultural immersion and no escape in sight, she had been lulled back into a sense of security. With unfathomable willpower akin to legend, Camille settled in to repress the memory of a certain pirate crew until it was nothing more than white noise in the back of her head.

Besides, her life could have been worse.

She could have ended up decorating the asphalt in a metropolis instead of crashing into a tiny altar.

Or woken up missing a kidney in a foreign country with no passport.

Or maybe having to cut through dense jungle with a machete and nothing but the clothes on her back.

Come to think of it, Camille supposed there were a lot of places worse than where she had ended up. That didn't mean she enjoyed being the only sane person atop an eerie floating island, but she got to live in a nice house with adequate food and access to medicine.

Thistle nestled himself into her severe bedhead with a contented squeak as Camille took a sip of her tea.

Maybe Gardenia wasn't that bad, after all.

* * *

Once the ninth month rolled around, Camille convinced herself to stop caring.

Yes, she had been through more emotional ups and downs than she could shake a stick at. But she was _alive_ and relatively unhurt. Hell, by now she could point out animal paths and edible greens and tubers already from her unglazed window. Her days were simple and repetitive, just the way she liked them. Wake up, eat, water the flowers, bake something, take a bath, wash her clothes if needed, go back to sleep.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Even her lost dream of becoming a cat lady seemed to be back in reach. She'd have to swap the cats for some overgrown caterpillars and a hedgehog, but she'd make do. Thistle had already wormed his way into her heart, just like the Gardenian slang had wormed its way into her vocabulary. Besides, the place was stupidly charming. Giant bugs aside.

In fact, life was surprisingly normal.

Until the day Fire-Fist Ace knocked on her door and ruined absolutely everything.

* * *

 **The actual chapters will follow ur average fanfic-style, have main charas, and dialogueeee ;w; /ollies out**


	2. your friendly neighborhood arsonist

**WELL THAT ONLY TOOK 2 YEARS.**

 _ **/slam dunks self into the dumpster where i belong**_

 **Sloooowly trying to crawl back to both Tumblr and fanfics, though. Honestly I think the ridiculous amount of time between updates is kind of my entire selling point by now. IN MY DEFENSE uni is fun but it's also currently pressure cooking me ;v; However summer is just around the corner, so maybe the stars will align and I'll be hit with the drive to push out a new chapter or two in the span of the upcoming holiday weeks. (I mean, probably not, since I'm working full-time this summer, but hey - fingers crossed!)**

 **28 REVIEWS THOUGH? You guys are amazing holy shit. I've been re-reading all the reviews multiple times, and it's all thanks to those wonderful wonderful wonderful words that I'm dragging my buttocks back here to try my best and give you guys an update. Thank you so much omfg T-T**

 **IIIII also still haven't caught up with the OP manga, since I've been kind of swamped with homework and assignments, but maybe I'll have time to finish it soon! (Like when I'm 38 lmao…) - My point being; if I've somehow unintentionally gone against the original OP plot in this chapter and the Ghost of Canon Past comes to haunt me tonight, y'all know why.**

 **Also, a few things I feel the need to address before we get to it:**

 **\- so here's a thing about me: i LOVE plotting. am i GOOD at plotting? no. do i know anything ABOUT plotting? also no. am i sure that i actually understand how plotting even WORKS? of course not. hence why this story is such a mess. it's mindless fun. mostly. but there's an overarching plot somewhere (though it might be hard to glimpse, especially during the first few chapters- apologies for the lack of plot in this one btw), and despite all appearances to the contrary, i do have some plan with an underlying theme to it. so stay with me here as i keep tossing mediocre content into the fanfiction void and praying for validation.**

 **\- also i tend to be vague when it comes to certain things because most of the story is still a WIP and i have a problem with changing the story a lot and people going** _ **"but i thought x happens and i thought x happened after y did this"**_ **and i'm sitting there like** _ **"yes but i'm an indecisive duck, i'm sorry"**_ **\- so don't be afraid to ask over on tumblr if there's anything that confuses you (though i can't promise you'll like the answer, since there's a 95% chance it'll just be a shrug emoji)**

 **\- and wow i'm so pleasantly surprised by how many people seemed to like Camille? But i feel like i should warn you that her blood literally consists of liquid salt and bitterness, so don't be shocked if you find her insufferable by the end of this chapter.**

 **\- and a HUGE thank you to** _ **Klexenia**_ **for offering to beta this mess for me– I would've never dared to post it online elsewise! Please please PLEASE go check out her stories on ff and her art on tumblr— it's all beyond stunning and she truly deserves all the attention she can get! (Every time I see her opoc crew on my tumblr dash I wanna scream god BLESS)**

 **AND THE LAST THING I WANNA DO is to quickly answer a couple of questions you guys left me:**

 _ **1 - Did she eat a devil fruit at the beginning?**_ **\- She did indeed! Though whether it actually does anything (besides transporting her to Gardenia) remains to be seen.**

 **2 -** _ **Do the characters of OP speak English in this fic since the Gardenians speak some sort of archaic English?**_ **\- Yep! I ended up picking English as the lingua franca since it makes things easier for me and I'm a lazybuuuum im sorryyyyyy orz (tho languages in general are gonna be a rather big part of the plot later on so keep that in mind)**

 **BUT HEY - I'll shut up now. Hugs and kisses to all the people who are sticking around during this update drought! You guys are absolutely swell! I hope you enjoy this chapter! Take a shot every time Camille scowls and let me know how nicely the hospital treats you! (dont)**

 **ONWARDS.**

* * *

 **Tea with a Stranger**

 **\- CHAPTER ONE -**

 _your friendly neighbourhood arsonist._

All in all, it was a rather lovely evening.

The sun was setting, leaving the sky in a soft dark-orange glow as the birds roosted in their cozy nests and a serene stillness settled over Gardenia.

Or, well, it would have been - had the air not been permeating with war cries and gleaming pitchforks as the Gardenians tried to violently murder Camille Cousteau in what could only be described as a new rendition of the Salem witch trials.

" _This,"_ Camille hissed, brandishing her wooden spatula like a weapon in an effort to keep the swarm of raging Gardenians at bay, all while balancing precariously on the edge of the island, "is all _your bloody fault._ "

"Alright, look - in my defense," began the freckled, fire-breathing monstrosity of a pirate who had _just completely ruined her entire life,_ " _I_ wasn't the one who dropped the flaming torch on his favorite flower."

Well, that was hardly fair. Technically accurate, sure, but not... okay, it _felt_ unfair. Besides, they wouldn't have been in this situation at all if _he_ hadn't set foot on the island in the first place.

* * *

You see, five days prior to that aforementioned Incident, Camille's life had still been quite normal- well, by her new standards, that is. She went about her days as per usual, pretty content while rumors about her were running rampant amongst the townsfolk - as is wont to happen when you're the only one above three inches on an entire island. The ghastly stories surrounding her existence had little effect on her daily life, besides giving her some new fairytale names to be labeled by whenever she actually opted to go outside.

Her current titles included (but were not limited to):

\- _The Crone_ (a true classic)

\- _Camille the Cantankerous_ (rather self-explanatory)

\- _Cruel Crusher of Life and also Hopes and Dreams_ (from that one time she accidentally stepped on a flower)

\- _Queen of Crumbs_ (due to the culinary revolution her sudden appearance brought upon the island)

\- and, surprisingly, _The Witch of the Woods_ (because the Gardenians were still enthralled by the idea that she was somehow a clairvoyant warlock who cursed people at will and ate children when no one was looking)

Fortunately, these bogus titles were enough to keep her out of most social interactions, which was pretty neat since Camillle's personal space bubble was roughly the size of 32 orca whales in a gradually widening spiral.

Not-so-fortunately, these bogus titles were also the reasons why a certain cowboy-esque pirate came knocking in the first place – and Camille, with her permanent sour mood and probably high blood pressure, welcomed his visit about as much as she would a surprise case of gonorrhea.

* * *

Now, one might be wondering; why in the world would Portgas D. Ace set foot in Gardenia in the first place?

...And quite honestly, there was no particular reason.

As it was, he could've very well decided to go straight from Drum Island to Alabasta without making a pit stop, but Marines had an annoying tendency to show up at the worst of times whenever he docked _anywhere_ – with the exception of sky islands (maybe because Marines were too lame to figure out how to get up there in the first place, but he digressed). Besides, after leaving a message for Luffy to meet him in Nanohana in ten days, he had a fair amount of time to kill and would rather spend it peacefully.

So there he was, feet firmly planted on Gardenian soil, and unknowingly about to meet a girl who knew things she really shouldn't.

…But before that, he met a tiny man of wrinkled foreskin appearance whose attitude made Ace _really_ worry about the Gardenians' local water source.

A man who was not only the apparent de-facto head of the village by virtue of his age, but also currently shaking his staff at the pirate and inspecting him like a baboon would inspect insects before eating them.

"A fairly large specimen," the man said, poking Ace in the knee, "Male perhaps, in seemingly good health, all limbs intact…"

" _Uh_..." Did he normally find people _without_ limbs intact?

Ace blinked, trying to ignore how the other inhabitants seemed to either stop and stare, gasp, or elsewise declare their awe at the sight of him, or how the blanket-toga wearing mothers steered their children in a large arc around the ongoing scene – and decided that this sky island probably had miniscule contact with the outside world.

"Tell me, son of the gargantuan people, do you find joy in devouring children in the midst of night?"

Ace stared, wondering whether he'd have to add _'escaped from potentially cannibalistic plant man'_ to the plot when he retold this story to his fellow Whitebeard Pirates. "...Not really?"

The Elder squinted at him. "And do you fare as well as your female occultist counterpart in the act of crushing innocent organisms belonging to the holy vegetable kingdom?"

"...You know, when I asked if you'd seen a massive dark-haired man with missing teeth, I was hoping for less metaphor and more longitude and latitude."

"Your stature bears monumental resemblance to that of the Crone," accused the man, completely bulldozing over the last statement. Ace had yet to identify the look of predatory evaluation for what it was, but he sure as hell didn't like it.

"...I see," Ace said, not really seeing at all.

The man babbled on – something about witches and spells and general evil abound – but Ace had long since stopped listening and was far more fascinated by how the old man's wrinkled top lip looked like the crust of a really old beef patty.

"– and beyond Camille the Cantankerous' dark forest lies only downfall and ruin, _mark my words_!"

"I'm marking, alright," Ace mumbled absentmindedly, scanning the tree lines. The old man appeared to be asserting his dominance via a stare down, but Ace deflected the potential dick-waving competition by appearing not to notice.

"– and _never_ hand her even a _tiny drop_ of your blood – she will lord it over you _for the rest of eternity!_ "

"Right. Thanks for the advice," he answered, mentally ready to somersault into the nearest bush and flee from the rapidly intensifying conversation if the need arose.

The Elder took a deep breath and stared at him sagely. "The Gardenian soil is quite acidic."

"That's….good?"

"Dead things decay rather quickly."

"Yeah, okay, I'm gonna go now."

And go he did – straight towards the specific island the old miniature grandpa had warned him about, because Ace was nothing if not adventurous and if he had ten days to spare, then he'd rather spend them in the company of a supposed witch than a tiny old man that made no sense.

" _DO NOT BE CORRUPTED BY THE GLAMOUR OF THE MODERN AGE!"_ the man screamed after him as he went, just as nonsensical as the first time he'd opened his mouth.

* * *

The garden itself was beautifully tended, filled with freshly cut grass and budding spring flowers. A calming earthy scent swept through the air, mingling with the smell of sweet shrubs and roses. There was a stepping-stone path in the shade of a flowering maple tree, leading up to a small wooden house, almost entirely integrated into the forestry.

Ace knocked on the door.

And waited.

….and then knocked again.

He was two steps away from opening the door himself when it finally swung open with a piercing _creak_ , revealing a— _uh_.

Well.

To be frank, he wasn't quite sure what he had expected the so-called witch to look like. Older, definitely. A bit more intimidating, maybe. Slightly scary, even.

As it was, she simply looked like how a cartoonist would anthropomorphize the deadly sin Sloth in one of those strange Marine newspaper cartoons.

She was shorter than him, and wearing an oversized bright green hoodie that covered the majority of her bony frame. Her hair was a disastrous brown battlefield of wild knots, and there might have been a hedgehog stuck in there somewhere squeaking for help– he really couldn't tell. There was a simple wooden spatula in her right hand and her expression made her look like a tiny nugget of molten rage. Honestly, the only magical talent she could possibly possess was the glaring capacity to single handedly revert the world back to an ice age.

She was frowning at his knees, as if expecting his face to be down there somewhere, before blinking thrice and following his legs up, up, up until she got to his face.

And then the frown morphed, slowly falling until she was staring straight at him in nothing short of abject horror.

"Yo." He said, raising one hand in greeting.

" _Glurfk,_ " she choked eloquently.

An aimless tumbleweed rolled by in the background.

…Her face was turning a rather alarming shade of purple.

Then her frontal cortex suddenly seemed to be back online, her brain finally managed to launch the escape program, and she promptly slammed the door straight in his face.

Ace blinked.

That...could probably have gone better.

* * *

 _Shit shit shit shit shit—_

She couldn't believe it. Or rather, she _could_ believe it, and that was _the_ _bloody_ _problem_.

There was a freaking _anime character on her doorstep._

"Shit, shit, _shit–_ " Camille clutched her spatula tightly, a pronounced note of hysteria leaking into her voice, " _shiiiiiiitshitshitshit–_ "

"Uh, hey–" Ace said, his face suddenly _right behind her,_ hanging upside down _outside of her window._

"– _SHIT_ ," Camille yelped and flung her spatula in his general direction.

He caught it with ease.

" _You_ ," she breathed, and he wasn't sure if it was an observation or a curse.

"Me," he agreed instead, jumping inside through the window.

Camille eyeballed the waning amount of vacant space separating them. Oh god, this was bad. This was _really_ bad. In fact, this was Number One on her list of Do Not Want, because it stood in complete opposition to her immediate life goal, which was Staying Alive.

(Yes, Camille Cousteau had very simple desires –

unfortunately, in this universe _'simple'_ clearly didn't equate to _'possible'_.)

"Here." Ace held out the spatula he caught (a spatula she had creatively christened Walter roughly two months prior) with a grin so white it almost offset the balance of facial color-schemes.

Camille stared at his hand like it carried a disease.

…Maybe he'd ignore her if she put a paper bag over her head and labeled it ' _not Camille_ '.

"...Hello?"

Or maybe she should just change her name, get plastic surgery, and move to a remote island in the tropics and spend the rest of her days in isolation – because _clearly_ fate had a sick sense of humor and kept deciding that Camille, mistress of gutlessness, needed yet another problem in her life.

"You in there?"

Quite frankly, Camille was not _'in there'_ at all _–_ her mind had enough trouble as it was trying to comprehend that Portgas D. Ace was no longer a cartoon on a page, but very much a living creature with a four-chambered heart, opposable thumbs, and a face so full of freckles they looked like dandelion seeds caught in a stray breeze.

" _Urk_ ," she choked out instead, trying to retreat further into the wall behind her – but unless osmosis was an option, she was pretty darn stuck.

He arched an eyebrow. "Are you always this articulate?"

Maybe if she kept ignoring him he'd go away.

(He didn't.)

Instead, Ace put the spatula on the table and let his eyes roam the room with a low whistle, before walking around. He apparently had no issue ignoring the girl in the corner, who seemed to be mouthing nonsense to herself and shifting her wide-eyed gaze between him and the door in some obscure form of deep-seated horror.

And then, after briefly studying the bunches of tied coriander on her shelf, he sat down in her chair– and proceeded to immediately _fall asleep_.

On _her_ kitchen table.

Camille sank to the floor, set her face down in her hands, and groaned.

* * *

And that, dear friends, was Camille's first meeting with Firefist Ace.

(After a moment of quiet contemplation, she tried getting him out of her house, but he was fast asleep and heavier than he looked, so instead she settled for going to the town square and praying that he'd be gone by the time she got back.)

The second time Camille met Ace, she was squatting behind a bush; alone, sweating, and kind of resembling a terrified tortoise as she did her damnedest to hide from the freckled pirate currently blocking the only path to her house.

Primarily because she did not want yet another run-in with Ace, and also because she didn't anticipate he would find her hiding behind said bush.

…Which, on later reflection, was an obvious oversight – seeing as he found her exactly four seconds after her desperate dive into the greenery.

" _Uh_ ," he said, pointedly.

"Uh," she repeated, practically feeling her face go three-to-four complexions whiter than it's usual toilet-ivory shade.

"…What are you doing?"

 _God, Allah, Jesus, Buddha, Mary Magdalena, that fancy lion from Narnia,_ _ **anybody-**_

"Oh, you know," she croaked, "Just…hanging out."

"In a bush."

"Bladder problems," she said, deciding to risk her remaining social grace by letting her brain produce an urgent yet somewhat humanly acceptable excuse for this predicament, "Can't hold it in for more than ten minutes."

An undignified silence followed, in which Ace stared at her with an odd mixture of terror and fascination, and Camille tried to subtly sink into the soil.

...Which didn't quite work, what with her being decidedly human and everything. So instead, Camille exhaled, put herself through numerous calming meditative techniques, and steeled herself to not scream– and then began the worlds most conspicuous crabwalk towards the beckoning house.

Ace watched her go, looking rather amused by the entire ordeal.

* * *

Ace eventually realized that Camille Cousteau only had two moods in her tiny emotional arsenal; _absolute panic_ and _horribly cranky._ The more he met her, the less she eyeballed him like he was a potential source of huge trauma, and the more she began behaving like a grunting octogenarian with an expression that promised pain for anyone who attempted conversation. She was probably the most cynical person he'd ever met. But he didn't really _mind_ her. She was vitriolic and grumpy and set in her ways, but not evil - maybe a little malicious, but if his hair looked liked that, he'd probably be angry, too.

On Camille's side of things, she was getting more and more annoyed by the world at large. By most average standards she was only a shut-in who preferred hedgehogs over the company of the entire human race– yet the abnormality that was her new life just kept sneaking up and kangaroo kicking her in the gut. Clearly, it wasn't enough that her life was now filled with devil fruits, time travel, and the overall suspension of reality. No, of course they had to throw a bloody _pirate_ into the mix.

And, okay, look— why _Ace_ , of all people? You know what, she could've dealt with Nami, or Smoker, or hell, quite a few of the characters. But _Ace_?

 _Ace_ was the opposite of her in every single way. _Ace_ did what he wanted regardless of it being against the fundamental laws of reality or not. _Ace_ was the type to lick metal poles in the dead of winter and put a phone in the microwave without any type of provocation. By nature, he was the type that confidently kept things out in the open for everyone to see – his opinions, his facial expressions, his _chest_.

But she'd survived all these months together with herbivore sky islanders– and one grinning bringer of fiery death was not going to break her track record.

* * *

So on the fourth day after his arrival, Camille found Ace laying spread-eagle in the middle of her garden and soaking in the sunlight. She stopped in the middle of her doorway to frown, commandeering a teacup in her hands and guarding it religiously.

"Oh. It's just you," she said, although the way she said it, it could have been ' _Oh. It's just the bubonic plague.'_

"Yep." Ace made a grand gesture of yawning and stretching and lifting the orange hat away from his eyes. "Just me."

"Do you really have nowhere else to go, or are you just trying to be as obnoxious as possible?"

Ace, who clearly had selective hearing, didn't bother answering and just gave her a wide smile. A smile, which, in her opinion, looked like it deserved metaphors that had to do with illumination and sunlight. And superlatives. She really didn't like it.

Avoiding the pirate was quickly proving to be an uphill struggle– whenever he wasn't off overthrowing the world order (or whatever he did in his spare time), he'd either suddenly cartwheel into her field of vision and stay there for hours on end, or just walk around Gardenia, disconcerting the general populace with an impressive display of unrealistic aerial acrobatics. And honestly, Camille felt more than ready to just give up on doing anything beyond breathing.

So she placed her free hand on her hip, made a sound that was the unholy offspring of a growl and a prayer to the heavens, and started glaring at the clouds overhead.

Ace blinked. "What are you doing?"

"Waiting for the universe to finish heaping its drama and misery upon me." Her scowl deepened. "At this point, I'd just like to get everything in one go so I can deal with it and move on with my life."

(Sometimes she imagined a titan-sized Eiichiro Oda behind the clouds, cackling like a madman and shaking up the snow globe that was her life just to watch her flounder around.)

Ace arched an eyebrow as Camille scrunched her eyes closed and counted to ten.

Then she counted to twenty for good measure.

But he was still there when she opened her eyes, and knowing a lost cause when she saw one, she scrubbed her hand through her hair and grimaced when her fingers snagged on a particularly nasty knot.

And then she proceeded to open her mouth and say something that even shocked herself.

She wasn't sure what possessed her to say it – because she was absolutely appalled at even the thought of spending a second in Ace's presence, let alone hours – and the fact that he could definitely strangle a militant with only a flower stalk was beyond bloody terrifying – yet she went ahead and said it anyway.

(Maybe it was because she desperately craved human interaction, but there was no way she'd ever admit to something that ridiculous.)

"Do you like tea?"

* * *

The only thing separating them inside her tiny house was a snoozing hedgehog and a battered tray containing a wide variety of homemade biscuits. The pirate wasted no time in making himself comfortable while holding a hot cup of chrysanthemum tea and watching the slowly blooming flowers float up to the surface.

"Sooooo," he started casually, "...You're human."

"Well spotted," Camille deadpanned, refreshing one of the sachet of dried herbs that kept the house sweet-smelling, before lumbering back to the table with a new kettle of tea.

"You from North Blue, then?" At her odd look, he continued, "Going by your accent. Never heard one quite that thick, though – no offense."

The tea stopped pouring for an instant, her face blank as the comment registered; she appeared to decide she didn't want to go into details and continued to pour the tea. "Yeah. North Blue."

(It wasn't that she didn't want to tell, actually it was quite tempting to just blubber out a _"uh, no, I slipped through the cogs of cosmos reckoning and wasn't important enough to be noticed",_ but there were so many ways that story could derail into the topic of " _also, I'm kind of a clairvoyant alien_ " and she had no idea how to even approach that.)

So instead, she evaded or deflected the rest of his questions until a strangely companionable silence fell over them, only occasionally broken by Ace trying to keep a new conversation alive until it was too deep into 'awkward' territory to salvage.

It kind of became a daily thing.

After the first time, Ace kind of just started inviting himself over whenever he was done upsetting the status quo for the day. He'd either come quietly, delicately stepping across her garden like a soldier in a mine field, or suddenly, doing a sick wheelie through her kitchen window without any form of warning (and consequently having to dodge every single cooking utensil known to mankind as Camille _really_ didn't like surprises).

Then they'd somehow end up at the familiar table with a kettle of tea and two cups between them, and Ace would keep asking her bothersome questions like:

"So do Gardenians eat anything besides vegetables?"

"Souls of the innocent, probably."

...

"Why do you have an endless supply of tea at all times?"

"I hoard it. Like Smaug."

"...Who?"

...

"Think I can get 'Cam' to catch on?"

" _No_. Absolutely do _not_."

"Worth a shot."

…

"Why does the Elder always look morally offended by your presence?"

"We're not on the best of terms."

"How come?"

"I kool-aided through his holy altar and he tried to kill me. Thrice."

"...Ah."

...and so on.

Sometimes a brief conversation followed, mostly monosyllabic on her end– but usually he'd just down cookies like it was going out of style as Camille watched him eat with the expression of someone watching a car accident in progress. On a good day she might grumble on consistent intervals about how he kept putting the spoon into the sugar jar right after stirring his tea and leaving annoying clumps of tea sugar– but usually she just kept quiet until he'd nod his head at her, jump out the window and onto her rooftop and running off into the distance, free to go terrorize the night. Because apparently all pirates were show-offs and it was hardly feasible to simply WALK off.

Anyway. That wasn't the point.

The _point_ was: even though Portgas D. Ace was a ridiculously powerful fantasy character who could probably wring her neck several times and tie her spine into a knot with his little finger alone, she still managed to keep some semblance of calm– because in a few more days he'd leave for good and then she'd never have to see him again.

(She was, of course, very wrong.)

* * *

"Wow, you really are starved for entertainment."

Ace blinked at her droll comment. He was sitting on one of the lower branches and dangling his ankles in the water, watching her dunk her black shorts into the river and scrub them with grit from between the rocks– which, granted, wasn't the most interesting thing to look at.

He shrugged. "It's not as though there's somehow a more pressing matter for me to attend to somewhere."

She paused her scrubbing to give him a flat look. As per usual, when he wasn't busy being a menace to society, Ace was alright with skipping his usual routine and imposing on Camille until she kicked him out of her house. As it was, they were already outside, so she'd just have to deal with his company and watch how his multitude of freckles seemed to be gathering new recruits on the edges of his face.

This had been going on for, what, six days now? After spending all these months in Gardenia, Camille could no longer conceptualize time and had a very shaky grasp on its passing– but she was about fifty percent sure it had been six days. Maybe. Probably.

"You'd think pirates have better things to do than to bother random civilians, " she said with a snort, giving him a mid-level stern glare (Ace had already made a mental chart, categorizing the severity of Camille glares).

He sighed. "Everyone's a critic."

She didn't expect anything else– she'd asked that question at least a dozen times, and had yet to receive an adequate answer.

"You know, there are better ways to go about washing your clothes in a river." He leaned back, propping his hands behind him on the branch. "You want a tip?"

Bluntly. "No."

As expected, the pirate went on regardless, providing running commentary on her washing style and beaming more cancerous UV rays until she just started tuning him out.

And then Camille, true to her untimely colors, went ahead and slipped on a particularly slimy underwater stone and slammed face-first into the water with windmilling hands. When she rose from the water like a specter returned from the grave and tried to wade her way back to the shore like a prehistoric caveman, Ace was already cracking up so hard he almost fell off the branch himself.

She was in the process of very delicately trying to remove her wet shoes and opened her mouth to release a verbal shitstorm on him– but then she thought the better of it and instead quickly pulled one of her sneakers off and, with the accuracy born out of a life-long training, flung it straight at Ace's face.

He caught it in time because he was genetically coded to be annoying (of course, what else did she expect?), but at least his laughter calmed down somewhat after she weighed her other shoe threateningly.

Instead, Ace waved at her with the first shoe still in hand. "Missed."

"Pity," Camille mumbled too quietly to be heard, but the pirate must have read her lips because he snickered anyway.

"Oh, cram it," she said bluntly, trying her best to twist the water out of her hair.

" _Catch!"_ Was the only warning she got has he threw the shoe back in her direction– and really, it was going like…zero miles per hour, if even, but Camille had the balance of a one-legged chair, so when she fumbled to catch the flying sneaker, gravity decided to kick in at the worst moment possible.

She probably looked pretty comical in that moment, flailing her arms desperately in hopes that the air particles around her would suddenly condense into some miraculous life-support.

...Which didn't help at all, so back into the water she went, toppling over yet again with a spectacular _splash_.

That shit-eating grin of his was still in place when she came up gasping for air and hurtled herself melodramatically back onto the riverbank.

"You…" She stuttered and the face he gave her _almost_ managed to look innocent. " _You…"_

"Shining example of masculinity?" He offered, and her frown was back with a vengeance.

"I was going to say asshole," she said stiffly and he chuckled.

"Sorry."

Her scowl turned even darker. "You don't look very sorry."

"Sometimes people smirk in self-satisfaction when they're feeling very sad."

"My fist and your pretty face will have words, Portgas. Words of pain."

"I really can't feel inclined to be offended by someone who needs my help standing up."

"Don't touch me."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

"I seriously hope you drown."

(He didn't really care to point out the fact that he had never actually told her his name – just figured she might've seen his wanted poster somewhere, or that maybe there was some truth to the witch rumor after all.)

* * *

(Disaster didn't strike until the seventh day rolled around.)

 _A well-known fact:_ The Gardenians loved flowers.

 _A not-so well-known fact:_ The Elder had a favorite.

It was huge; a fresh-blooming oriental lily with a deep blush near the stamen, surrounded by leaves so big one could count the veins if you wanted. The Elder had placed it smack-dab in the middle of his own garden, where bypassers could only sneak a look over the fence and enjoy its beauty from afar.

Unless you were Firefist Ace, in which case you'd just leap over the fence and trudge straight over to it to get a better look, only to be interrupted by a horrified Camille on her way home from the village center.

"What the _hell_ ," Camille hissed, "are you _doing?_ "

Ace turned around slowly, locking eyes with her scandalized face. "Uh...Exploring?"

" _Exploring?_ " What was he, Dora's long-lost twin brother? "Get _out_ of the Elder's garden!"

"Unfortunately you have absolutely no say in this," Ace said cheerfully. "Your attitude has been vetoed since you're a fun-hating nerd."

Camille spluttered. " _Excuse me?_ I know this might be hard for you to grasp, but some of us have an image to maintain!"

"The image of a shunned meat-eating spellcaster?"

"...You're a jerk and you can't cook," she informed him stiffly. It wasn't her finest moment.

Now, normally Camille would've left him to his own devices, but this was _Gardenia_ , and she was currently the unlucky person dubbed their residential witch. Which meant that if anything out of the ordinary happened, she'd immediately be blamed for it.

And quite frankly, she already had more than enough on her tiny plate.

So as the afternoon started bleeding into evening, Camille was still staring in some mix of fascination and mute terror as Ace proceeded to grab a branch, light it on _freaking fire_ , and holding it like a makeshift torch.

"...You know, I always knew reality was falling apart, but this just kind of confirms it for me," she mumbled, trying hard not to think about the strictly enforced no-fire policy of the island.

Ace blinked, decided it was probably just another one of her weird comments that really made no sense, and bent down to illuminate the big flower in the soft firelight to get a look at the details.

Camille stayed quiet for a few more seconds, still struggling to make room for the concept of magic in a world that was continually surprising her.

"So–" he started loud enough to alert the entirety of literally every person in their vicinity.

" _Shh!_ " Camille hushed at him, casting furtive looks around the empty garden.

"Right, down-low," he said with all the delicacy of a trombone. "Got it."

Just as he finished the last sentence, he did an overdramatic perimeter sweep, and began waltzing around and hugging walls like a bad imitation of James Bond, occasionally rolling across the ground and being the polar opposite of stealthy.

Camille, fully aware that he was doing it just to be a little shit, glared accordingly.

...and oh _god,_ that torch was getting awfully close to the Elder's favorite flower.

"Give that here before you burn this entire garden to the ground!" She flung one leg over the fence, failed to hoist herself over the edge, and elegantly face-planted into the ground with a muffled _"oof!"_ , before scrambling to her feet and stomping over to Ace like a dark cloud armed with the hair of Medusa's less fortunate sister.

"...Alright, sure," Ace conceded easily with a shrug, and handed her the torch.

\- and here, disaster struck.

Or, well, to be more precise: the branch was heavier than it looked, and Camille's hands were sweaty and gross from the miniature panic attack the previous scene had caused her.

So the still-burning torch slipped from her hands like an eel through water, and landed straight on the innocent flower below. The flower immediately went up in a plume of bright yellow flames, experiencing cremation in standard procedure and leaving only smoking remains.

The silence that followed could have rivalled oblivion.

Ace stared at the burnt flower remains and then back at her, his face an almost comical mask of incredulity. "...Did you just…?"

"... _Oh my god,_ " Camille whispered. " _Oh dear sweet Jesus_."

True to her shitty luck, the door to the Elder's house slammed open- and so the witch hunt began.

* * *

Our two not-so-lucky accomplices were balancing at the very end of the island.

Or– Camille was, at least. Ace was taking it all rather well, actually.

Once the Elder realized his beloved plant had been burnt to a crisp, he'd pretty much arranged an army of furious Gardenians and ordered them to swarm Camille en masse. And while Camille had never been athletic (she barely managed to walk up a flight of stairs without passing out from exhaustion, let's be honest here), the sight of thirty mini-soldiers yodeling with incalculable rage made even _her_ bolt through the forest at a pace that would have left her old gym teacher wiping a proud tear.

But now they were at the edge of the island with the two parties staring at each other– one looking fierce with their pitchforks and hammers and staffs, and Camille looking somewhat unfortunate with her...well, her nothing.

And then there was Ace, who was to her left and staring calmly at the scene with his arms folded behind his head, like he was listening to wind chimes and water and softly chanting monks instead of standing three meters away from a rapidly escalating murder attempt.

She caught him whistling in her peripheral vision and wished him pain. Endless pain.

The Gardenians were closing in, and if she tried to make a run for it, she would be in stabbing range. They would definitely not hesitate to turn her into a Camille-kabob, and she really didn't want that on her epitaph. So she tried to school her expression into something that said _'I fight coyotes with my bare hands'_ and waving her spatula in tantalizing aerial patterns to ward them off.

It wasn't working.

" _Portgas_ ," she bit out in the mildest tone she could muster. "A little help would be _greatly_ appreciated."

"Help?" He gave her a faux-innocent look, and she tried _really_ hard not to strangle him.

"Yes, _help_. Any scenario where the garden gnomes don't try to stab me to death is just _fine_ ," she hissed under her breath. The Elder looked at Camille in a way that suggested she shouldn't get her hopes up.

"Your mother smells of elderberries!" yelled one particularity enthusiastic kid armed with a wooden fork.

Ace still seemed rather busy examining the lines of his palm. "What's the magical word?"

At his side, Camille gave an anguished gargle. " _What?!_ "

"The magical word."

"You're _kidding_ me!"

"I'm just saying, the rest of your possibly short life hinges on this moment."

(In retrospect, Camille was pretty sure Ace wouldn't have let anyone die at the hands of a Gardenian– but at the time, the chances of her long-term survival were getting awfully close to zero, and she didn't care to think about logic.)

" _Can you help or not?!"_

" _..._ So anyway, ignoring your inevitable and bloody fate..."

"Spare me the platitudes, you impertinent _pests!_ " spluttered the Elder with so much spit flying towards Camille's face that if he had been a pastor she would've been baptized on the spot.

" _PORTGAS I SWEAR TO GOD_."

"Alright, fine. Guess that's the best I'm gonna get," he relented, straightened his hat, and closed the space between them..

Quite honestly, she wasn't sure what she expected him to do.

Maybe perform a splendid fireshow to take their attention away as she fled, or maybe some impressive and overly cliché speech about unbeatable love and friendship that would leave them all sobbing, or maybe just an actual _fight_.

She did not, however, expect him to place a hand on her collarbone and promptly _shove her off the edge of the island._

' _This_ ,' she thought numbly as she clutched Thistle like a lifeline and free-fell towards what could only be certain death, ' _is definitely not good.'_

* * *

 **A/N: LET OPERATION NAKAMA COMMENCE**

 **Our little grumpy bridge troll might be trying to avoid the plot, but trust me when I say that their two paths will inevitably converge, and Camille will shit an entire brick.**

 **Okay I WAS NEVER HERE, SHH, CRAMMING LIKE FUQ BEFORE UNIVERSITY BREAKS UP, WAS WORKING THIS WHOLE TIME.**

 **THIS WHOLE TIME.**


End file.
